AI vs Humanity: Darcy Gabriele on Why the Future of Events Is Still Deeply Human

What happens when AI gets smarter… and events get more human? In this episode of Barefoot Business, Liz sits down with Darcy Gabriel from BW Events Tech to explore the tension between automation and authentic connection. They dive into AI copilots, vibe coding, data overload, and the rising pressure on event professionals to do more, faster. But at the core, this conversation is about something bigger: how we design events that prioritize real conversations, psychological safety, and meaningful outcomes in a world obsessed with efficiency.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Barefoot Business, the podcast where we kick off our shoes and dive into real, unfiltered conversations about the business of events. I'm your host, Liz Lathan, co-founder of Club Ichi. And together with our insider members, we'll explore strategic event marketing topics that matter most to our community. Welcome everybody, Liz Lathan here with our Barefoot Business Podcast. And I'm so excited to be joined today with Darcy Gabriel. And Darcy, you and I first met. Goodness, has it been seven years now when you came on our very first secret family reunion?

SPEAKER_01 0:33

You were like instant friends. The very second I met you, I was like, oh, this is my person. This is good energy or abound.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Well, that was a little trauma bonding because as I recall, you did not have a suitcase.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

I feel like that is my legacy of the OG uh secret family reunion is that I was the girl who didn't have her luggage. But talk about an amazing events community because I was like, you know, working with you to like figure it all out. I get into my like apartment that I was sharing with Karen. Uh um now at Low. Yeah, exactly. And she had laid out a set of pajamas for me from her bag, like just and proactively. She barely knew me. We just met that day, and she had laid out a full set of clothing so I had something to sleep in that night.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Like I didn't even know that's the power of this community for sure. And then you gathered up a bunch of other ladies from the trip. And didn't you like take one of our chauffeurs with the nice hair and go shopping? I did.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, I mean, yeah, um, there's just the team, the team behind it was just so generous. They were like, We got you, let's go. We're going to HM right now. Got a couple of outfits. I mean, we were there for a week. Like, it's a long time to not have your clothes. Um, but I got some emergency backup clothing and we were good. It really, truly, when I think of my time at Secret Family Reunion, I don't even think about that part. I'm like, that got resolved, and like I just remember all of the fun that I had.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

That's so funny. I love that so much. And so, okay, so one of the things that you and I talked about talking about today is AI, which is like the polar opposite of this whole human experience that we're doing and bringing with live experiences. And everybody says it that, you know, the more we get into technology and AI and all the things, then the humanity is gonna matter so much more. But there is uh like I am seeing what AI can do for people and their businesses and all this stuff, and it's like, it's legit, man. It's not just some little chat GPT-ish thing, it's like can run businesses now. Yeah, isn't that wild? It is wild what I'm seeing people do with this stuff. And so I would love to hear your perspective on it. So, how uh like, are you scared of it? Are you excited about it? Are you like, where do you stand in the AI world?

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah, mostly excited, but cautiously so. And the reason that I say that is like anything else, you know, there's an equal positive reaction and an equal negative reaction. You know, and I I think about the way that I use AI in my life and the way that I've been able to offload some of my tasks and some of my mental capacity because now it's easier and I don't have to think about certain things, but I'm very careful to make sure that I'm thinking about other things, you know, making sure that people are not losing that critical thinking skills, making sure people are still understanding the why behind what ChatGPT or or whatever AI tool you're using is saying. And then being able to reflect on it and be like, am I gonna just take this answer verbatim or am I going to double check it and see if it rings true to like my intuition, what I think the answer would be? Um, so I think it's a great shortcut for a lot of thinking, uh, but I get a little worried that it's going to uh replace some some higher level thinking skills for for people.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

You know what? I think I heard a podcast where somebody said that AI will only amplify your true personality. If you are a lazy person, you will leverage it to create lazy content. And if you are an enterprising person, you will leverage it to make your life and everyone around you's lives better.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Right. I've been thinking a lot about the phrase like how you do one thing is how you do everything. And I think chat, you're right. Like AI amplifies that mode of like how you do one thing is how it's going to reflect in every other part of your life.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Mm-hmm. That's so true. And so I think, you know, especially across the event industry, a lot of us are definitely using AI for content generation. So I'm like, I put in the idea for the event and I can generate the content that I'm gonna slap on the red site. And if you don't put that little bit of oversight to it, then you catch those just generic AI words quietly. Uh, you know, what are some of the key phrases that you see every single AI creating and people putting out there? Like you have to go back and reread it and things like that. But I'm intrigued by some of the stuff that AI is doing beyond content and beyond copywriting. So you are at BW Events Tech and you guys are, I know, partially tech agnostic and that you can work and support everybody else, but you can also do custom build things. How much are you leveraging AI for custom builds?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

You know, it's a great, it's a great question because so much of the value that we bring to the table is really that strategic partnership of understanding, you know, what is the actual end result? Like let's start from the very, very end, then let's work ourselves backwards. And then how we achieve that, yeah, of course we're going to leverage AI because why should we reinvent the wheel every time? That would be so silly. But but the value is not just that end deliverable, it's the entire process and how it sits in the larger ecosystem and the larger context that's really important. Because I think sometimes AI kind of creates a one size fits all. Whereas we know because we work with so many varied clients and we work with so many different event types within those clients, it is a custom context every single time. So even though AI can help craft those shortcuts, you still need to mold the tool to the very specific type of event, type of audience, goal and purpose of the event, you know, and all of that, all of that strategy stuff that that come along with it. So when I think about BW, I think about it as that tech strategy partner to help craft the best path to the end goal, given all of the other elements involved, rather than just the executioner.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

So can someone come to you and say, like, we don't care what tech platform we use, whether we build it or we do whatever, but what we definitely want is one of those AI trained chatbot things. And we definitely we want this, this, this. Can they give you those kind of requirements and you figure that stuff out with them?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Uh one, absolutely. Two, I would love it if a client came to me and was like, I don't care about anything else, because that is not my experience with events. Okay, what's your experience? What are they doing?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah, tell me, tell me how they're coming to you.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Oh, they just have lots of opinions, right? They want like a very specific type of tool, and and maybe they have a tool in mind, or maybe they want us to consult with them on what's going to achieve those goals. But I I would say, uh, I mean, you know, because you're also one of them too. Event marketers, event planners, event organizers, uh, very opinionated on lots of things, which is great, right? We love the collaboration. We love that. We love people who are like, yeah, be in this with me. Let's decide these big things together. But we're almost never deciding just one siloed element of an event. We're almost always collaborating on every single piece that that a data point might touch throughout the event.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Okay. And so, how deep do you go in like an event professional's full tech stack when it comes to like they they come to you and they're like, we definitely need to build a site, and whether or not they're bringing you their technology or not, there you does it matter to you if they have to do APIs and connections and to HubSpot and Salesforces and all of these things, or is that just like, hey, that's just part of the requirements? It's not really a concern.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Exactly. Yeah, I feel like by the time the client is ready for the level of BW's expertise to come in, they're gonna have really robust requirements. Yeah, they're gonna have probably multiple tech stacks depending on the event use cases, and they're gonna have complicated integrations, data flows, those things are gonna change year over year and event to event. So they need that partner that has that historical context and that consistency to be able to adjust and deliver based on honestly the project scope, which really does change every event.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Yeah. So one of my LinkedIn contacts actually posted the other day. She's like, I need a new Reg tool trying to do these kind of field events and activations and things like that, and I don't know where to start. Do you have any recommendations? And so it's just like now it's a free-for-all on her freaking LinkedIn, right? So, how does someone from the beginning phases in RP? I mean, most of the, and she's a senior event professional, like she's been in this for a while, but I think I know the post you're refer referring to. But but I think that she had um, I mean, she's just in that position of I I've inherited something and now I have the opportunity to go out and look. And I don't even know how to start. So how does one start? Because I actually reached out and I was like, hey, I run this community, as you know, and I have like all of these event tech tools in. So if you just want like a sounding board and want me to kind of go through personalities and things like that, let me know. So I'm talking to her about it.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Oh, good, oh good. I'm I'm actually really glad that she's leveraging all of the specialists within Club Ichi for this decision. I mean, yeah, so clients will um have us consult with them on what is the best stack for their different use cases. And so sometimes they're just looking for a more specific, like maybe it's just the field events, but they're set on like tier one, you know, signature user conference kind of thing. Maybe it's the opposite. Maybe they're good on field and internal events, but they really need something for their flagship program, whatever it is, we'll partner with them to gather all of the requirements across all of the stakeholders. You know, we'll really help them project manage that RFP process and then we'll support them in those conversations with the platforms. Because we have teams of people internally at BW who are experts in every platform, we can when we sit in the room on these demos, we can usually drill in on specifics and kind of be a client advocate better than the the client can be for themselves because they can't know they can't know everything as it relates to this. So we'll partner with them and then we'll work with them to generate a a matrix of how these different platforms support each of these different requirements and then kind of weigh that against the priority of that requirement. Um we'll look at pricing, you know, we'll do this full end-to-end project with them, um, and then and then just help them make a decision on on the platform. Then once they make that decision on their own based on everything, we'll typically help them onboard and get it set up and get those templates built out, the reports built out, and get it to a place where it's usable for them to just go off and run with it.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

How do you find people are buying today? Is it are they does everyone have a SaaS mindset of like I just let me just put down a subscription credit card and we'll just keep going? Or are people thinking of it as project-based still?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

In my experience, it's still quite project-based. Yeah. And I I think the reason for that and why event marketers are so different than every other marketing aspect is because typically our clients are, you know, they're spending all year round focus on these like one, two, maybe three events. These are their babies, you know, there is so much emotion uh tied to this. So that it's um a very personal kind of kind of decision. It's not like, yep, this subscription will work for me. I'll pay monthly and just kind of like adjust my event to what the software says. I'm finding that clients are like, no, no, no, the software is gonna bend to my event needs, it's gonna bend around me versus vice, you know, I'm gonna bend to the software.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Isn't that so true? I even back when I was at Dell, I used to tell all the vendors that we talked to. I was like, okay, so we are not the kind of company that will just buy a red chair and be happy with our red chair. We are going to buy a red chair, cut the legs off three inches, paint it blue, and then six months later ask why we painted the chair blue and ask for it to be red again.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

So and then if Dell was ever like, hey, we're gonna go just go build a blue chair with no legs, then that's when you'd bring in BW.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Perfect, perfect, perfect. No, we'd probably have tried to build it first, and then we would be like, wow, no one can sit in this chair. What's wrong with it? Ankles a bit, it's fine. Exactly. Well, okay, so in the age of AI, we all know that events are just becoming the place where people feel like they're more authentic. You can actually get to real people, you can have real conversations because we've, you know, learned now that content is free. You can get content and information absolutely anywhere from every single source. But conversations, those are things to be curated and facilitated and actually exist. So, how do we leverage AI in this? Because I will say I hate the idea of AI matchmaking. Have you seen this kind of thing ever work? Or what are your thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Um, okay, let me ponder that. And then let me just say one quick thought because I actually think of you often, Liz, as I'm navigating my, you know, work life. Uh, because the concept that I feel like you and Nicole have have um really formed around the unconventional format. Wait, what is it actually called?

SPEAKER_00 13:33

The unconference, the spontaneous think tink.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Unconference spontaneous think tink. Thank you. I've I knew that. I don't know why I stuttered. Anyway, the fact that it's essentially user-generated content and then user-selected or attendee-selected content, and it really becomes this organic choose your own adventure. To me, that is the exact thing that attendees actually want. They don't really want the one-to-many content where they're just absorbing. I mean, they I'm speaking in like very bold brushes of whatever they do, there's a place for it. But I'm finding more and more people want that peer-to-peer, in-depth, collaborative learning style that you can really only get from events.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

And I don't think and AI will find a way to like do something close to that. But but right now, I don't think that's what people want. Anyone can just type in a chat GPT and see what they say and call it good. I think people are like, no, like help me dive in on this very help me deep dive on this very specific problem that I'm trying to solve and make it relevant to me so that I can take these learnings and apply it to me directly.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

I really feel like event content is moving more and more in that direction.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yeah, I feel like when my whole thing is if I bought a plane ticket to come listen to something I could have watched on YouTube, then like why did I make that time and and money investing in it? So if now if I am learning something from you and I can then go take it and put it into conversation and continue the conversation, turn it into a workshop, actually like explore it, then there's the value. So I'm not saying eliminate all keynotes. I may be saying eliminate all panel discussions. I think those are awful, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Um, actually, you this is reminding me. Did you see that recent email that HubSpot Inbound put out based on the results of their pre-event survey?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

No, tell me.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

So interesting. I I really want to dive into this report, but they were like, hey, at a high level, we heard from you that what you care about the most is leaving HubSpot Inbound with a tactical playbook of things that you can action tomorrow. The people said, We're not interested in inspiration, we're not interested in just like ideas and case studies. They're like, I want something that I can literally write down and say, I am gonna implement this into my, you know, marketing stack tomorrow. And I was, and I don't think that was true the year before. I think they were like, we hear you, and we're gonna adjust our event based on this feedback.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

That's great. I think more companies need to be doing this and asking those pre-event questions and actually trying to understand what the audience really wants. I mean, it's so hard. And this is why I personally love our spontaneous think tanks because we don't have to come up with an agenda. We don't have to figure out what's going to be relevant six months from now after we published what the topics are gonna be. But that's always the problem is you're doing these call for papers, you're doing all of these things six months beforehand, and the world moves so fast. How can the content even possibly be relevant six months later?

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Truly, the the world has changed, the people have changed, the role has changed. Honestly, people could have changed companies by then. Like it is, you're right, the spontaneous think tank model where it is hyper-relevant down to the minute. That's really just the direction everything's moving towards. You guys are just peers in it.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

I I think the the one thing we miss from it is that um, I would say, I don't know how to properly say it, but like that qualified expertise, you know, like where you can you can truly choose the person who is the expert to be in the room for it, where instead it's very much a peer group and it's you know that kind of thing, which which has its own level of value. But to be able to say, oh, this is what the attendees want, we were able to bring that speaker in, is you know a little bit different. Now we are doing a spontaneous think tank in Chicago, which fortuitously enough happens to have the head of content and research for the U.S. Travel Association coming live and in person, which is perfectly timed for all of the stuff that's going on travel right now. Um, so Kevin Hinton, he's fantastic. And we're like, okay, will people get on airplanes again? How long will TSA be like this? What's going on in the world? Will any international people come to the US for an event? So all the questions we've been asking is it perfectly timed, but I can't say that we really planned on the world going crazy when we got him to come to the event.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

I'm so glad I'm going to be in the room for the Chicago event then, because that's gonna be a great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Yes, yeah, really excited. But then again, taking that from where we're gonna get to hear all this stuff and then turning it into an immediate think tank session. So great, now we've heard this perspective. Now we've heard where the projections are. What do we do? And how do we take that back to the industry?

SPEAKER_01 17:59

To your point though, it's almost like the invitation list becomes one of the most important parts of planning these events. You know, it's how do you craft the exact right people to be in the room so that the conversations are the most productive that they could be? Yeah. You know, it's it sort of highlights the the need for these micro, highly curated kind of events where it's it's not one size fits all, but we really want to narrow in on the right people to talk about a very specific topic or series of topics.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah. And I wonder how can we who already have like event reg tools and platforms or who are working to build them, how can you leverage AI to take any of the pre-event questions of what topics are top are, you know, top of mind for you and what are the biggest challenges that you're having, and then have AI kind of start spitting those out. And then can you start those conversations ahead of the event and build that into your platform?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Yeah. No, there's actually a company out there, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say their name or not. So maybe this can be like a follow-up podcast. Um, but they're actually trying to solve this exact issue and they're partnering with BW to solve it, but it's basically creating that event AI agent to follow you as the attendee, event to event, and knowing what you've learned about, knowing what your priorities are based on historical event presence, not just within an organization, but like across your life, uh, and then going to future events, helping you decide which events to go to, and then how to maximize your time and your networking within that based on this AI agent talking to the other attendees, AI agents.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

That's kind of creepy.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah, Liz. It's like well, I'm genuinely excited about it. I think it's so cool. Um, I know it's in like pretty early stages, um, but if I can share more about it in a couple weeks, I totally will.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, that'd be amazing. Because I mean, on the one hand, it's super creepyfied how things can find me because I said it out loud and now my phone markets everything that I've said for the last 12 hours. But on the other hand, now I'm getting ads specifically targeted to things that are truly interesting and relevant to me. Like I don't need any more Liberty Mutual ads. I'm fine, right? So, but when it starts sending me things that are exactly the type of hotel I've been looking for in some secret destination that I could maybe go find, like then it's figured me out, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:12

I appreciate a good targeted ad. I'm not gonna lie.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Agreed. Nicole gets on the weirdest, wildest ones. Like it's historical the things she comes up with.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Okay, that would actually be a very fun game. Like, guess whose targeted ad this was, and it'll be the most random thing. And it's like, who in the room got this one?

SPEAKER_00 20:33

I actually really love this plan. The one that she sent me the other day was I don't know if you've seen it now. It's basically a magic wand that you slip your credit card inside, and so when you go to pay for things, you just tap it with the magic wand. So she just invented it, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Because that's the most Nicole thing I've ever heard in my life.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Isn't it though? So we're gonna have some 3D printed so that we have our own magic wands to just go tap.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

That is so funny. I could totally see like some parent doing that at Disney World, you know, like exactly.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Exactly. Disney probably sells them for$400 each. So exactly. Okay, so let's take this tech conversation back to humanity, which is what we started about in the beginning. And I think you believe the same thing I do, which is that tech shouldn't exist to exist. Tech should exist to be in the background and make the human part simpler to experience. So, what are you seeing as kind of the the future of how tech can disappear even more and not be in front of everybody as a barrier?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Ooh, I really I really like that. I think having these event co-pilots baked into like just the mobile app experience, and it doesn't even have to be like you download an app, but just some sort of phone experience where you can quickly ask questions and get information right away so that you're kind of minute by minute choosing your own adventure at the event. That I'm I'm a little surprised that isn't more fleshed out in the events industry yet because uh I've kind of needed this for years. I can only do so much planning, but as we've discussed, my day-to-day can change. You know, my plan on a Monday could be irrelevant by Thursday. Um, and I think having an event co-pilot where I can quickly be like, hey, I've got an open 30 minutes. What should I do right now? What session should I go to? Who should I talk to? Where should I go hang out? Where are other people hanging out? You know, I think when we can get that level of event co-pilot in your pocket, that will really optimize people's time at events.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yeah, I think that is gonna be really interesting. I I don't know when people are gonna be eager and really and ready and willing to give them all the information they have. I think oh well in the US, I don't think anybody cares. Like privacy is not a thing, you know, like it's just whatever. But we've already sold our soul to every major tech company. Um but in Europe, like this is how what I really get fascinated by is the whole global distribution of it because I used to run a global team and it was always so different from the data privacy in every area, and now it's even more so. So, how can we take all of this wild, crazy, fun, amazing ideas that we're creating in the US, but actually make it translate to Europe where they're like, yeah, I don't think so. And have me do all the way.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

But like, I've also so I agree with you, but I've also seen it that some of these tech companies are really hesitant to leverage like real AI at their event because they don't want to creep out their audience. Right. Or they're like, we don't want them to really know how much data we're tracking.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

So I yeah, I think that tide is only just now starting to turn where people are like, I actually see the benefits of this in my day-to-day life and I'm down for it. You know, it's no longer as as creepy as it once was, at least in America. I think you're right on a global scale, it's very different. I would actually be curious, I should do more research. I'm not poised to speak on this yet, but like with the perception of this in Asia and how that audience, you know, what their level of comfort is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Well, because I mean, I think about the one that you're talking about that can track your attendee journey and your personal life and your professional life and kind of follow these things. On the one hand, that's really cool because if I go to an event industry conference and somehow this concierge, co-worker, co-pilot thing knows that I've actually been Googling event reg tools and I'm trying to figure it out and I'm creating my own matrix of what's best. And now when I get on site to the event, it can start nudging me towards sessions that are going to be relevant, people who are in this industry, other people who have also been searching event reg for us to have conversations now about like, oh, I heard that you were also trying to figure out which one to use. What have you found so far? And now that's when AI matchmaking becomes less service level and something that's actually meaningful and useful to you. And that's interesting to me.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Well, and then I feel like you can even that's when we can start developing spontaneous think tanks with AI, you know, like, hey, we see you're in this room. Here are other people in this room, here's what those people care about. Like, if you're interested, like this is a great way to start this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah, I that's pretty exciting. And I don't think that any of that stuff is very far off. Like, we have a a friend who runs a music venue and the things that he's been able to do with AI to actually run the venue. So when you can put in here's the upcoming artist, and it can find out how many tickets the artist has sold at previous concerts and then what that ticket sales timeline looked like, and then it can automatically create all the creative for Facebook ad campaigns and then programmatically put out the campaigns and know when it needs to dump more money in based on where ticket sales are and just run it all automatically. And now you don't even need a marketing person because the AI is doing it all. Like these are the kind of things that just blow my mind and they're real and they're happening.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

And then that data, that's what every single event marketer I talk to, that's what they want. They want a model to predict when they're gonna see spikes in ticket sales and when they should panic versus you know, letting knowing that people book their tickets last minute now. We like we all know that. But if they had an AI model to say, hey, based on similar events, here's where they saw their biggest spikes in ticket sales, yeah, like then they can make decisions on like if they're behind, if their price point is correct, etc.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

I'm surprised I that is something that I think some of these tech tools should be baking right into the platform.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Oh, I completely agree, especially in B2B. So those of us, you're absolutely right. That is 90% of what the senior event professionals' role is is to keep the executives calm. Which is like, here's what other companies like us are seeing in registration. It is a hockey stick at the last two weeks, and here's what we need to do in order to make sure that we are all confident in it and that that hockey stick actually does happen and you know, figuring those things out, but we're not given that data as event professionals. And if you're not involved in a community or you know, something where you can actually ask your peers, then you don't have it at all. And that's where the technology companies could really be supporting them, or they should just all join Club Ichi and we talk about it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Club Ichi is just the AI. The human version of AI. Yeah, tell me what your ticket sales were like. Okay, great, thanks.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Yeah. But then actually, maybe this will be like a fun side uh quest for you and me, Liz, is I I do think we should be gathering this research, putting together some report based on what everyone's saying on ticket sale trends.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

I would absolutely love that. I mean, I can tell you from our spontaneous think tanks that um yeah, we always get nervous. Will anyone show up? Do we need to cancel it? What do we do? And it's literally seven days before the event that we get 20 additional people to sign up for it. And it's super frustrating because you don't know how to order food and do any of the stuff. But but at the same time, like we've we've now seen it enough that we're can be pretty confident that's gonna happen and it's like crazy.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Right, right. It's almost like you just budget in like a 20% unknown forecast of ticket sales. You're like, I don't know who's gonna buy these tickets yet, but I know 20 people are gonna sign up. Right. I'm gonna plan on that.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

And then I think the biggest thing internally, especially when you have a branded conference for your own company, if you've put a ticket price on it, we don't necessarily need the ticket price to drive the PL. You've just put it there to establish some monetary value for people coming to it. So at what point do you turn on the scholarships, right? And when do you start just blasting the planet with like just for you, free pass this year only, kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Which then goes back to what we talked about before of like making like that invite list is so important. Like, are you trying to be one size fits all and just have 5,000 people in the room? Or is it better to just have like 1,500 people, but it is like the most highly curated group of people?

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Are there any event tech platforms that actually will allow people to show that they're coming on the red site? I feel like there's some Martech platforms that like when they've purchased something, you start to see the little like a user you purchased in California and like it'll pop their name up or something. Do any of the event ones do that?

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Oh, yeah. We have uh there's literally clients I can think of out the top of my head, and it these are private events, but when somebody registers, they have the option to consent to being put on the website. Oh, and then automatically their name, title, whatever is added to the website. And this is something BW for this event, we built it on Swugo. Okay, um, but yeah, it's like an automatic little integration that once they consent to it, their name, title, and company displays on the attendee page.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Oh my god, I need that so much. Because you're exactly right. It's like it's who's in the room and people want to know who's in the room. But you don't want to like, as the company, go like, I'm gonna stick all these people on the website. Here's the brands that are coming. Like that's just feels icky and weird. But for them to be able to opt in and be like, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going. I think that would be really cool.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Huh.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Yeah. I mean, you could even get really fun with it and have people upload a headshot, and then you can have like a very, you know, curated kind of artistic way that it's displayed with people's like smiling faces, yeah. Would make me sign up for an event.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about BW Event Tech's kind of AI leadership. Like, where do you feel like you guys are? Are you managing the things that exist or are you building on AI and kind of looking to the future? What's the next five years for y'all?

SPEAKER_01 30:07

That's a really good question. Because a lot of things historically that we've done have been client-led. You know, our clients are these innovators in the event world. And then they partner with us to like flesh out these complex ideas, develop the plan for how to build it, and then we'll go and we'll we'll build it. And so, so for a long time we have been pretty client-led. And that's because we're not a product company, right? We're a services company. Um, and so that's probably how we will stay. We're not looking to build a Reg platform or or build a tool to do this and then go and sell it on the market necessarily. Uh, but what is cool is when client A has us build something, we now have that thing and we can go bring it to other people to to to our other clients to go and leverage. Sure. So I think it's a little bit of like chicken and the egg. It's like client will help lead like pay for the innovation, and then we can have other people kind of take that out.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah, but now you have a proof of concept and you know that it works, and it's like it's a very easy path to now be like, okay, someone else might want this too. Like, we've got like we used to do that all the time with those. Remember during COVID days, we did all these virtual adventures, and it was like we'd come up with 20 ideas for the crazy virtual adventures we could do, and the client would pick one. Well, there's 19 that went unused. It's not like we should throw them away and come up with 20 new ideas. It's like, well, here's 19 that are still on the table.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Exactly. And and so there's a lot of, you know, very smart entrepreneurs out there who are building these very cool AI tools for events, and then they're asking BW to or they're partnering with BW to help like actually make it useful in the events context, right? So we partner with a lot of different tech companies that are solving really interesting things and we'll we'll bake it in with the clients that we work with.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Um so yeah, I think I think that is like that collaborative tech partner where we are the level of human expertise and service, that's where BW has historically sat, and then that's where we want to continue to sit.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

That's really cool. So, what are y'all thinking about in the next five years for AI? Because I mean, the reason I asked this is around people not using Reg tools at all. Because that's one of the things. So we did in Club Ichi last year, we did this AI hackathon. And the whole concept of it was a six-week project where people volunteered to take on a work stream, and we had six weeks to figure out what AI could do for that work stream to create a virtual event that was all about AI and what AI could use to create the event. And so first week was identify what work streams needed to exist to create a virtual event. Second week was identify what tasks we thought AI could do. And then third week was figure out what AI tools could do those tasks. And then fourth week was start using it, and then fifth week was put it all together, sixth week was the event. And through part of it, one of them was vibe coding. This is where I learned how to vibe code because one of the the girls on the team just did a screen share and showed us what she was doing in Replit or Base44 or whatever it was she was using, and like spun up this beautiful hypersight to just sit on top of the Reg tool. And so like it wasn't capturing data, so we didn't have a security issue to worry about. It was literally just the hypersight, but she like got it all within our branding, and we came up with all these like graphics for it that were the like glitchy was the name of our bot who was the guy that was the host of the whole thing. Wait, that's really cute. Oh, it was great, and then somebody else put glitchy into a video tool, and he became the MC of the entire event, and so he would kind of pop in with his interstitials, it was fantastic. But now people are taking it to the next step and just vibe coding an entire reg site, which to me red flag on security and like data and all that stuff. Yeah, but I think they're doing it anyway. So, how do we manage that world?

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Yeah, that I mean, that's interesting because there are AI tools inside of a lot of platforms, you know, like Brain Focus has one and Zettle has one where you can essentially vibe code within the tool. But what's nice about that though is like the tool is still protected with their security compliance. It's like the tool has guardrail so that you're not vibe coding in a vacuum, you're vibe coding in a very specific context.

SPEAKER_02 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

But my prediction would be that's probably more the future of AI as it relates to Reg, where you've got some sort of container like a like a zettle or a rain focus, then you're vibe coding inside of that. So you're not spending a ton of time, you know, doing a lot of like manual configuration, etc. Although I will say I have spent some time vibe coding. There's a lot of there's a lot of glitchy things that still come along with it.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

So yeah, part of me is like, part of me wonders, like, yes, it's easier to just type in prompts, but the level of QA and testing that is then required, I don't know if it's just faster to manually configure.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

Well, and it comes back to what AI amplifying, whether you're enterprising or lazy, because I think that if you're just gonna spin something up and then let it go into the world, it's gonna break all over the place. You're gonna have a data breach, people are gonna have all sorts of issues.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Liz, you're right. That's my biggest issue is that my standards haven't lowered with AI. I'm I'm still very much like, I am going to thoroughly QA everything I do, test it, try and break it. And if it's not up to my standards, I will spend so much time being like, no, do it this way, do it this way. Yeah. Which is where I got kind of frustrated with vibe coding because I was like, I'm smarter than this machine.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Yeah, yeah. Then my husband was helping someone. My husband had a background in like programming, C, computer science, all that stuff. And then we had another friend that was vibe coding this very complex project that he was working on, and he's like, it works really great. And he sent it to my husband to look at it. He's like, It's really great. The code's messy, but it's like it works really well. And then he went to go vibe code another portion to it, which broke everything that existed before. And he sent it back to my husband. He's like, Okay, well, why didn't it work? And he's like, Ah, because you didn't plan for these kinds of add-ons. This isn't something that can just be tacked on. You didn't think about the architecture of the experience. You just went, like, let's basically let's take the Winnebago and let's add on a jet ski and let's pull a motorcycle and then let's pull.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Which is why vibe is like actually the best word for it, because you're right. It's this like iterative, sort of like evolving process. Whereas for these complicated like tier one events that we typically work with, it does need to be thought through from start to finish, all the different elements, all the different like contexts, right? Like you have to think through the sponsor experience, the speaker experience, the VIP experience, and then you're building under all those contexts, which like vibe coding is not there yet. It's it's not going to replicate that level of like complexity and architecture, which is the word you used before.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

I think I I'm optimistic for anyone who's willing to be enterprising. I think that anyone who's going who's unwilling and who does take the more lazy approach, those are the ones where the jobs will be eliminated. Like, you know, we we used to, what was it a year ago everyone was saying AI won't take your job, but people using AI will. No, AI will 100% take your job if your job is something that you're not actually using thought for. But but I think that, you know, I think it really can elevate us. That I feel like right now, though, personally, I'm in that realm where AI has only made things faster and more complicated, and like I have more work than ever, and I haven't quite figured out as maybe it's a delegation problem. I really am crappy at delegating to people too.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Let's let's talk about this for a second because I agree with you. I feel like despite the fact that I can automate a lot of low-level tasks, I just feel like all that's increased is the the expectations and the the crunch. And I'm feeling as much pressure and just as busy, if not busier, yeah than before I was leveraging AI.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I just think back to the days. I'm old enough to recall when we did so many things on paper and like people would fax in their conference registration, and it was like crazy stuff. But the the pace was so much more like legit nine to five, you know, things would come in, you would then go home. We didn't have phones that could contact you 24-7 and slack messages pinging around the world.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

I mean, you're like on yeah, today you're probably doing 4x in that same nine to five window than you were doing back then.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Yeah, I saw this meme that said, um, sorry, I haven't returned your text. I am uh suffering from an onslaught of data 24-7 with a brain designed to pick berries.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

I love that. We should all have a berry picking hour, the middle of the middle of Wednesday every week. That's a great idea. Thinking about pace and thinking about higher expectations and and doing more with less. You know, I've been I've been thinking about how to lead in the era of AI a lot. You know, and I when I say lead, like I'm relatively new to being a leader. I got promoted about 18 months ago. So now I'm leading the entire sales department within BW. Um and I'm doing it in this like unprecedented era where there's no playbook for how to lead when everyone's burnt out, everyone is, you know, and I say everyone meaning like the whole industry, like our clients, our nerds, like, you know, how are you how am I to motivate a team and and get them to work at this optimal level while keeping these expectations in check? You know?

SPEAKER_00 39:19

And it's what have you come up with?

SPEAKER_01 39:23

My honestly, the the biggest thing I've been thinking about a lot is like psychological safety of like, do you feel engaged with the work and do you feel like you're interested and and inspired by the work that you're doing? And I think that's gonna be the biggest theme coming out of us all working through AI is like how do you stay, how do you stay with it? How do you stay super connected to the work? How do you stay just like locked in and lasered in as you leverage these AI tools to do to do a lot of stacks and accomplish a lot of tasks in an eight-hour window, which let's be real, no one's working eight hours a day. We're all working way more than that.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Correct. And I I think that my only North Star that is maybe hopefully helpful is curiosity, which is like, okay, so rather than just feeling the pressure of just failure and overwhelm and all the things, it's like, okay, why am I feeling this way? Why do I feel like I have to respond to the Slack message the second that it comes in? Why do I feel like I have to answer this call and not hit decline? Why do I feel like this needs to interrupt my life? Like this is what is this me? Have I allowed it to impede? Or is there truly something like, oh, well, there's an event going on? These people are trying to find the door and they don't know how to get to it. So yes, I need to answer that call. Um But you know, figuring that part out is a curiosity direction.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

Yeah, yeah. And what like, what do you think the answer is? Like, do you think this is just like you're a high performer, I'm a high performer, we put tremendous pressure on ourselves? Or do you think there is like a shift in expectations in the larger event world?

SPEAKER_00 40:57

Well, I'm trying to figure that out too, because how much of it is generational too. So those of us that are elder millennials or Gen Xers, it was like, suck it up, drink from the water hose, keep going. Like the parents are gonna lock you out until the sun goes down and then come back in the house and figure it out on your own. And then meanwhile, you know, a lot of the the younger generation are a little bit more, no, no, no, I don't feel safe in this environment. I don't like the pressure that's being put on me, and I don't have to take it. Um, and they've put boundaries that we wish we had, I think, and that we are like resentful of because we never had the ability to put those boundaries in place.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

And so it's we didn't even have a language for it. I didn't know what a boundary was until like my mid-20s. Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

The boundary was like that fence you weren't supposed to climb that we climbed anyway. Yeah. But so I think that, you know, us learning from the the next generation of workers and understanding that actually boundaries are okay to have, and because we haven't let ourselves understand boundaries as technology grew. Because we are like I got I've got my phone, I've got 17 messages coming in all at once. I finally found this tool called Beeper that pulls in five different messaging platforms in one place so I can see my LinkedIn direct messages, my Slack direct messages, my SMS, my um, what else do I have? My I anyway, I've got five different things, my Facebook messages and one other thing, all coming into one place so that it helps like the ding ding ding ding ding ding dings, but it doesn't help because I see them all at once now. And now I feel even more overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Well, that's fair. But I actually I think I would like that having it in one place versus having to go check it in five different places and try and be on top of it in different places. I'm like, if I had a one-stop shop, I actually think that would be very calming for me. So I'm gonna write that down. You said it was beeper?

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Yeah, it's beeper and it's free for up to five connections. And then if you need to add more connections, then you can like keep it going. But it's like it's changed my life. It was fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Actually, Liz, I feel like you have to post that in the Club Beachy thing because if I could see the Club Eachy stuff in the same like thread as my like work slack and my tattoo stuff, I'd probably be a lot more, ooh, I'm gonna do this.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

But these are the things where even with that, because I can see all of them in one place, which on the one hand has made me less ADD, but on the other hand, has now made me feel like I need to respond to everything right this very second. Cause back when I just saw LinkedIn when I opened LinkedIn, it didn't feel the same sense of urgency. Whereas, you know, I'm talking to younger folks that run their own communities and that do other things, and they're like, no, I only answer community conversations during these hours. And I'm like, I feel like I must be on all the time to serve the community at all moments, you know.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Um, you want to know what I did a couple years ago, and I've never looked back. I turned off all push notifications for work-related stuff. I don't get email, Slack, LinkedIn messages, none of it pushes on my phone.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

It is like I go and intentionally check it when I want to. It has been transformative for me.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

That's a huge release of cognitive pressure, I feel like.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Exactly. Exactly. And it um for me it's just the focus. Like I'm such a something pinged me, I need it I need to acknowledge it right away. And I'm like, if I don't want to see it, then it's fine. It's out of sight, out of mind.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yeah. I think that we have this conversation a lot in the Solopreneur channel in Ichi because it's like, you know, setting boundaries is even harder because like every message could be money. So you know what I mean? So that's like the ooh, the the stress and the pressure of all that stuff. So how do you manage those things?

SPEAKER_01 44:18

That's a good point. But then I would also then kind of make the counter-argument of like um your time is also money, you know, and your attention is money. Right. So it's like every time you check it, you're spending a dollar. So maybe it's you're spending a dollar to potentially make five, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Well, and the reminder that I heard yesterday, which was every yes is saying no to five things. So every time you continue to say yes to all the others, what are you not doing? So when I say yes to answering these messages, I am saying no to talking to my kids over dinner or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Actually, Liz, I needed to hear that message right now. That's really good. Saying yes to this thing is saying no to five other things. Yeah, that's really good.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

This has been a fun therapy session. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

See, I told you I care a lot about psychological safety.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

You do. This is amazing. And believe it or not, it's already been like 45 minutes. So we've covered a lot of territory.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Wow, that's actually really impressive. I actually I read the book recently, Unreasonable Hospitality. Oh, yeah. A good favorite. A good favorite. Of course you do. Obviously, I'm slow to the party because I just literally just read it like a month ago. Um, but he but he talks so much about you know empowering people to do what's right for clients and doing it because he created the safe environment where people are allowed to take big risks and people are allowed to fail, which I think is so important. If you know that you can fail, if you know that it's okay and you can bounce back up, you're gonna like shoot way higher than you would if you knew that you there would be a shame-based conversation or a judgy conversation to follow. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

And I find it really interesting that that book has taken off as much as it has, especially in the restaurant world, based on all the stuff that's just recently happened with Nomad and the founder of Nomad and all the things that he did not do unreasonably in the kitchen. So, or that maybe he was extremely unreasonable but in the wrong direction in the kitchen for all of us. Yeah. And but going above and beyond for your guests, and I it is an amazing anthem for hospitality. So if you've not read Unreasonable Hospitality, if you're listening to this, definitely go get that book. Um, but but I do think that the psychological safety of the leadership allowing the team to make decisions to a certain dollar amount, isn't it? I think was it Ritz Carlton that has like a$10,000 allowance for some of their staff that you can solve a customer's problem up to the$10,000 limit if like something goes horribly wrong or something for them. It's that's just incredible. Interesting, interesting things that some of the companies are doing.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

Totally, but it but that empowerment piece is so important that people feel this level of ownership. You know, it's I feel like these micromanagey cultures where they're like you have to like run the ladder or get permission or talk to someone first. Right. Well, then you're like, well, then I'll never take action because there's so much friction to take action to do what's right for someone.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Empowering people to be like the the leader of their own department, even if they're a department of one and they just have one job, you know, rather than like an employee waiting for tasks. Because that's what AI does. And an AI is an employee waiting for tasks. So let the AI do.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Yeah, right. Like it's all like we're like the CEOs of our job. We're the CEOs of like our little corner where we get to, we're empowered to make every decision as it relates to it.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

I love that. Well, you're an amazing leader and you're gonna continue to grow your team and to be an even more amazing leader.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

I, you know, I'm learning, right? I'm 18 months into this, so I'm like rapidly learning and and being challenged every single day. But it's a fun challenge, I have to say. I actually quite enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

That's amazing. Well, Darcy, how can people find you if they would like to talk more?

SPEAKER_01 47:49

You know, I'm on LinkedIn, so I feel like that might be the easiest thing. Darcy Gabriel probably got a mutual connection with me if you're in the events industry.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

That's probably true. You're also in the Club H Slack channel, so they can tag you in there.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

That's probably even better. I'm in the Club H Slack channel, and then I'm gonna sign up for beeper so I'll see your message.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

All right. I love it so much. Well, thank you for spending time with me today. This was such a fun conversation.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

You're the best. I can't wait. I'm gonna see you in Chicago in the world. I know see you in a couple weeks. Hugs in person. Hooray!

SPEAKER_00 48:19

See you soon. Thanks so much. Thanks for tuning in. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, join Club Ichi as an insider today at weareichi.com. That's weare ici.com.